Repeated experiences of this sort
have finally led me to believe that when I am
able to make the written word convey the full
essence of truth and sincerity
there will cease
to exist any discrepancy between the man and
the writer
between what I am and what I do or
say.
The same aim
– unification – is implicit in all religious striving.
Perhaps
without knowing it
I have always been
a religious person.
The effort to
eliminate the “repulsive” aspects of existence
which is the obsession of moralists
is not only
absurd
but futile. One may succeed in repressing
ugly
“sinful” thoughts and desires
impulses and
urges
but the results are patently disastrous.
To live out one’s desires
and
in so doing
subtly alter their nature is the
aim of every individual who aspires to evolve.
But desire is paramount and ineradicable
even
when
as Buddhists express it
it passes over into
its opposite.
In that first year or two
in Paris
I was literally
annihilated. There was nothing left of the writer
I had hoped to be
only the writer I had to be. (In
finding my way I found my voice.) The Tropic
of Cancer is a blood-soaked testament revealing
the ravages of my struggle in the womb of death.
The strong odour of sex which it purveys is
really the aroma of birth; it is disagreeable or
repulsive only to those who fail to recognize its
significance.
Even when I close my eyes
I must be careful how I dream and of what
for
now only the thinnest veil separates dream from
reality.